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Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend

Rin-Tin-Tin was discovered on a WWI battlefield in 1918. The adorable German shepherd went on to star in several movies throughout the 1920s and 30s. Eventually, his legacy was cemented in a popular 1950s television program.

In the beginning, there was an orphaned German Shepherd puppy in the war-torn fields of World War One France, and a young American soldier who had spent a lot of his life lonely and isolated, and part of it in an orphanage. The young soldier was Lee Duncan; the orphan puppy became Rin Tin Tin, a leading canine actor of the silent movie period.

It’s easy to misunderstand that last bit, today, when animals in movies almost always play a comic role and are foils for the human actors. During the silent era, animal actors were on a much more equal footing with human actors, because neither had the advantage of speech. Rin Tin Tin, along with other dog actors, played a range of dramatic roles comparable to a human actor, and Rinty, as Duncan called him, was a major movie star. He was smart, highly trainable, and learned to express a wide range of emotions. Duncan took him home from France (an adventure in itself), trained him, and eventually started making the rounds of the movie studios, campaigning for a “break” for his beloved dog.

Orlean gives us the very human story of Duncan’s mostly isolated childhood, his pre-war happy employment in the gun department of a sporting goods store, and, after his return home from the war with the puppy Rin Tin Tin, his discovery that the experience of war had made him permanently uncomfortable around guns. He needed to find another way to support himself, and time spent with his dog was the surest way to ground himself and remain functional. (Many soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have had remarkably similar experiences, including the steadying benefits of a companion dog, whether brought home from the war zone or not.) Rinty gets his chance, becomes a big star, and he and Duncan are living the good life.

Then Rinty gets older, less able to do his really athletic stunts, and the Depression hits. Lee Duncan was, as a businessman, honest and naive, and got hurt badly by the financial crash. But he never gave up, and he believed in the idea of Rin Tin Tin as much as in the specific dog he brought home from France. This is also the story of the descendants and maybe-descendants of the original Rin Tin Tin, and Duncan’s dedicated efforts to keep the idea and the ideal of Rin Tin Tin alive. This includes the incarnation of Rin Tin Tin that both Orlean and I knew as children: the tv show set in the American west, decades before the original Rin Tin Tin was born. That tv show was created by producer Bert Leonard, who became as dedicated a supporter of Rin Tin Tin as Duncan himself.Both Duncan and Leonard experienced success because of Rin Tin Tin, but also paid a real price for a dedication that went beyond the pragmatic and, in business terms, beyond the sensible. This is a fascinating look at not only the dogs who were Rin Tin Tin, but the people around them, and the impact this dog had on their professional, personal, and family lives.

I didn't know that RIn Tin Tin was a real dog that just happened to be an actor. I didn't know that Rinty was rescued from a WWI battlefield by the man who became his trainer, his advocate and his person, Lee Duncan. This is a many layered story, all revolving around the dog, the entity and the legend. The people who were passionate about the dog and his offspring as well as those who were interested in keeping the concept of the wonder dog alive are all in the story. Orlean does a great job researching all who came into contact with Rinty, whether it be as a lover of the shepherd breed, a fan of the character he played or those wanting to keep the idea alive and make their fortunes.

Wow. I don't even know what to say about this book that would even begin to do it justice. I watched Rin Tin Tin, the TV show, as a kid (in re-run form of course, as I was born about 30 years too late to see the original). But I was unaware of the full history of the dog. He was more than just a character – he was a real dog whose legacy would live on well past the first Rin Tin Tin. And this book isn't just about the dog and his decedents, it's about the making and changing of movies and shows through a century, about the owner who loved him, the fans that adored him, life, love, and heroism. The author did an extraordinary amount of research and took nearly a decade to finish to book. She delves into so many aspects and the people that made the legend of Rin Tin Tin possible, from the owner, to trainers, to producers, fans, and many other people. She even delves into her own story and how she feels she connects to it all. I like how the author doesn't detach herself from the story but includes her narration and journey through it all. This book is definitely well written. If I could have just kept reading this book without pause, I would have. Very well done. If you ever grew up a fan of Rin Tin Tin or just love dogs in general, this is a great read. Recommended for many. ( )

But by the end of this expertly told tale, [Orlean] may persuade even the most hardened skeptic that Rin Tin Tin belongs on Mount Rushmore with George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt, or at least somewhere nearby with John Wayne and Seabiscuit.

But 'Clash of the Wolves' made me understand why so many millions of people fell in love with Rin Tin Tin and were moved by the way he wordlessly embodied many of the questions and conflicts and challenges that come with being alive.

Rinty was named as a corespondent in the divorce, a role usually reserved for mistresses.

The Academy Awards were presented for the first time, and Rinty received the most votes for Best Actor. But members of the Academy, anxious to establish the new awards as serious and important, decided that giving an Oscar to a dog did not serve that end, so the votes were recalculated, and the award was diverted to Emil Jannings, for his performances in both 'The Way of All Flesh' and 'The Last Command'.

In his way, Rin Tin Tin had come to represent something essentially American. He wasn't born in the United States, and neither were his parents, but those facts only made him more quintessentially American: he was an immigrant in a country of immigrants.

He got his own salary, separate from Lee's salary as his trainer, and he earned more than most of his costars; in 'Lighthouse by the Sea', for instance, he was paid $1,000 per week, while the lead human actor, William Collier Jr., was paid only $150.

Rin Tin Tin grew from being one dog to being a sort of franchise. And as his fame grew, Rin Tin Tin became, in a way, less particular—less specifically this one single dog—and more conceptual, the archetypal dog hero. I think that's why the first question I was asked whenever I told someone I was writing about Rin Tin Tin was always, "Was there really just one?"

In her memoir Saunders recalled that at most of their stops, "the ringside was crowded because everyone was anxious to see the 'two crazy women from New York with their three trick Poodles.'"

I asked Carolyn if she felt sibling rivalry toward the dogs. She laughed and said, "No, there was never any rivalry. The dogs always came first."

Here you can pick your narrative. Rin Tin Tin III, the next Rin Tin Tin in line, who was born in 1941, might have been one of Junior's puppies, a chosen one who stood out from among all the other puppies, the embodiment of not his father but of his illustrious grandfather, old Rin, and who, like his grandfather, was marked for destiny. This is the narrative many people, including Daphne Hereford, choose to believe. Or you can believe that Rin Tin Tin III was a beautiful puppy purchased by Lee, quietly and without mention, from another breeder, and that he was a puppy as clever and responsive as old Rin, with that same compact build, but with a lighter sable and cream coat that was easier to light for film.

But in early Hollywood, animals that were not recognizable stars often had a rotten time. Horses got the roughest treatment: they were tripped, shocked, raced into open trenches, run ragged. To make a horse fall on cue, wires were strung around its ankles or threaded through holes that were drilled into its hooves; the rider simply yanked the wires to pull the horse up short.

Whichever dog showed up to put his paw print on headshots, to meet kids at a country fair—that dog was Rin Tin Tin for that moment.

Kresge's, a five-and-dime chain, set up larger-than-life Rusty and Rinty cardboard cutouts at the end of every aisle in a few of its stores to promote Rusty bugles and gun-and-holster sets. The promotion was so successful that Kresge decided to set up the same displays in every one of its 650 stores around the country.

The number of German shepherds in the United States had been growing even before the television show went on the air. In 1947, 4,921 German shepherds were registered with the American Kennel Club. In 1954, before 'The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin' had its impact, the number had more than tripled, to 17,400. By the time the show finished its prime-time run in 1959, German shepherd registrations with the AKC had grown to 33,735.

German shepherds are known as "trotting dogs," and they have a long, gliding gait. In a show ring, a German shepherd moving in a flying trot looks both powerful and weightless, as if it were on a cushion of air. To make that trot even more dynamic and long in reach, breeders started to look for dogs with hindquarters that were deeply angled, in a perpetual crouch, ready to spring forward. The line from the dogs' shoulders to their hips was no longer horizontal; it was an almost forty-five-degree slope. The inbreeding to produce dogs with such an unnatural pose also produced dogs with a tendency toward hip dysplasia, cataracts, hemophilia, and aggressiveness. Other popular dogs that were bred to exaggerate their show qualities suffered the same deterioration.

The arena was an open-air building with high rafters and a sloping roof, the sort of place that birds seem to view as a ready-made housing development for birds, so there was peeping and fluttering and nervous preening going on just overhead.

He said he'd been waiting to get a Rin Tin Tin dog his entire life, and he couldn't believe he was finally going to bring one home. "I think," he said, raising his eyebrows, "I was a German shepherd in my previous life."

But I reconsidered, and a few weeks after I came back from Texas I looked around on the Internet and found one of those Breyer Rin Tin Tins and bought it—and it sits on my desk to this day. There was something gratifying about being able to do that, and disappointing. It finally summed up a certain open equation in my life, but it also reduced a persistent memory, and even a persistent melancholy, into an eight-inch plastic figurine. I was happy to have it, but I sometimes missed the bittersweet weight of my memory, of recalling those days at my grandfather's desk, of feeling so sharply the aches and joys of childhood and the mystery of my family, of realizing that my hunger for that toy had led me to spend these years of my life learning the story of Rin Tin Tin.

With the television show off the air, the movie rights tied up in knots, Lee and Bert both gone, it sometimes felt as if Lee's promise that there always would be a Rin Tin Tin had been reduced to some toys and comic books for sale. It seemed like such a compacted version of what Rin Tin Tin had been. A more optimistic viewpoint might be that, these days, living forever means having been enough of a material presence in the world to win a permanent place on eBay.

As much as she hated Bert Leonard—and the feeling was certainly mutual—at that moment she would have found a lot to discuss with him. They both had come to know well the pain of parting with something you believed was priceless, especially when it was, ironically enough, to cover the cost of protecting it.

He is that rare thing that endures when so much else rushes past; he is the repeating mark in our memory, the line that dips and rises without breaking. It is the continuity of an idea that makes life seem like it has a pattern that is wise and beautiful and indelible, one thing leading to the next; the individual beads of our lives, rather than scattering and spilling, are gathered up and strung along that endless line.

I, too, had set out to be remembered. I had wanted to create something permanent in my life—some proof that everything in its way mattered, that working hard mattered, that feeling things mattered, that even sadness and loss mattered, because it was all part of something that would live on.